Found out the other day that 72 people dancing to Thriller beat the previous world record of 63.

NEW YORK (AP) - Michael Jackson himself wasn’t there. But there were just enough of his fans on hand to take a shot at breaking the Guiness World Record for the number of people dancing to “Thriller.” Madame Tussaud’s wax museum in New York says 73 fans turned out to dance around Jackson’s own wax figure to do the dance to his biggest hit. The previous record was 62. The event was to mark the 25th anniversary of the release of the Thriller video.

Don’t send out congratulations cards just yet. Guinness says it will review tapes of yesterday’s event before confirming the records — a process that could take two weeks.

What about this? I’ve written about them last year. Around 1,500 inmates/prisoners of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines.

Dear God is a global project for people around the world to share their innermost hopes - and fears - through prayer.

It doesn’t matter what your version of God is…Jesus, Allah, Buddha, simply a spiritual universal energy, or maybe you call God THE FORCE… praying to a higher power–something or someone greater than us soothes and heals–aside from giving us the sense that there is more to life than our simple existence. It is believed that people who pray are healthier, happier and more resilient. Some people, like the Christian saints connect their fulfillment to fulfilling the will of God.

Hey everyone! I am now officially part of Blogging Idol 2! (clap clap clap)

UPDATE: A reader gave me a heads up. Apparently, there is a problem with how Feedburner reads the subscriber stats. He said that it’s safer to just subscribe via email instead of the Firefox Live Bookmarks. Subscribing via email ensures that you’re counted as a subscriber. Thanks!

Why do some people get all the luck while others never get the breaks they deserve? A psychologist says he has discovered the answer.

By Professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire.

Ten years ago, I set out to examine luck. I wanted to know why some people are always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune. I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.

Several years ago, when I was a Jesuit, an aunt of mine died of breast cancer. That was a major crisis moment for me. I couldn’t understand so many things about the event. I couldn’t understand why I was there in Novaliches (where the Novitiate is) and Sapang Palay, Bulacan (where I would go for apostolate every Sunday), give my presence to the people, minister to the sick there, give communion to the dying, help in solving other peoples’ problems—while there in Cagayan de Oro, my aunt was dying.

Before death, I am silent. Before death, I do not have anything to say. Before death, I lose my tongue. I could write a long letter to my dad who is relatively healthy, but I found that I do not know what to say when I tried to write a Christmas card for my aunt.

Got this from the September 1999 Reader’s Digest . There are a lot of great treasures in old magazines I tell you. Read till the end, it’s worth it.

by Lois Smith Brady

I began to learn about love in dancing school, at age 12. I remember thinking on the first day I was going to fall madly in love with one of the boys and spend the next years of my life kissing and waltzing. During class, however, I sat among the girls, waiting for a boy to ask me to dance. To my complete shock, I was consistently one of the last to be asked. At first I thought the boys had made a terrible mistake. I was so funny and pretty, and I could beat everyone I knew at tennis and climb trees Faster than a cat. Why didn’t they dash towards me? Yet class after class, I watched boys dressed in blue blazers and gray pants head towards girls in flowered shifts whose perfect ponytails swung back and forth like metronomes. They fell easily into step with one another in a way that was completely mysterious to me. I came to believe that love belonged only to those who glided, who never shimmied up trees, or even really touched the ground. By the time I was 13, I knew how to subtly tilt my head and make my tears fall back into my eyes, instead of down my cheeks, when no one asked me to dance. I also discovered the “powder room,” which became my softly lit, reliable retreat. Whenever I started to cry, I’d excuse myself and run in there. I finally stopped crying when I met Matt, who was quiet and hung out on the edges of the room. When we danced for the first time, he wouldn’t even look me in the eyes. But he was cute, and he told great stories. We became good buddies, dancing every dance together until the end of school. I learned from him my most important early lesson about romance: that the potential for love exists in corners, in the most unlikely as well as the most obvious places.

I am posting this statement by some of the most respected faculty of Ateneo de Manila University. Most of them I know and some of them were my teachers. I do not intend to fight with anyone about this. But I want you to read it, because it opens up the discussion and makes you think. Honestly, I am sick and tired of people taking a stance without reading the whole bill and just obeying “what the Catholic Church says.” Fundamentalism happens precisely because people do NOT think and just follow blindly. There is a reason why we have a conscience. And there is a reason why we can think.

Now if after reading this, in your conscience you decide to go against the RH Bill, well and good. At least you thought about it already. That is all I ask really for. :-)